Materials Data on HgI2 by Materials Project
HgI2 crystallizes in the orthorhombic Cmc2_1 space group. The structure is two-dimensional and consists of two HgI2 sheets oriented in the (0, 0, 1) direction. Hg2+ is bonded to six I1- atoms to form distorted edge-sharing HgI6 octahedra. There are a spread of Hg–I bond distances ranging from 2.65–3.77 Å. There are two inequivalent I1- sites. In the first I1- site, I1- is bonded in a distorted single-bond geometry to three equivalent Hg2+ atoms. In the second I1- site, I1- is bonded in a distorted single-bond geometry to three equivalent Hg2+ atoms.